Prologue
Before you read this:
This is not the full story.
The podcast episode above is the unfiltered version, recorded in a Bangkok hotel room, with air-conditioning malfunctioning.
What you’ll read here is a distilled reflection.
If you want the texture, the pauses, the frustration, the vulnerability in real time, I'd like to invite you to listen above.
If you prefer the TL(!)/DR, read on.
“Get someone else to sing it.”
Years ago, I met a producer I admired.
He was a respected figure in his niche.
We met for coffee in a plush hotel in Calcutta, where we were both on tour.
I had my laptop. Headphones.
An album (my 2nd), I had poured myself into.
It was the first time I’d truly tried to reconcile my ancestral influences with my global reality.
Musicians from India. The US. Different corners of the world. Remote recording before it was normal.
I was proud of it.
He listened. Briefly.
His first comment:
“It’s not krautrock.”
“It’s not krautrock.”
I didn’t even know how to respond to that.
For context: if you were a German musician in certain circles, you were either classical, techno, free jazz, or krautrock.
I was none of those. I was a brown, alternative jazz singer-songwriter with an Indian name, trained in European conservatories, working globally, trying to understand where I stood.
Then he said it.
“Get someone else to sing it.”
I felt my heart break in real time.
I had reached out for feedback.
(In his defense, he’d warned me he could be rude).
And he was. He went on to rant about the internet ruining music.
About royalties. About porn.
Meanwhile I was trying not to cry in a hotel café in Calcutta, red eyes easy to excuse as pollution.
But that sentence landed harder than anything else.
''Get someone else to sing it.''
Not tweak it. Not refine it. Not work on phrasing. Not deepen the delivery.
Replace the voice.
The phone call that changed everything
I called my girlfriend at the time. She was an accomplished musician in her own right. I expected something analytical. Balanced. Objective.
Instead she said:
“Ask him to get someone else to sleep with his wife.”
That sentence set me straight.
It took me years to fully understand what she meant.
At the time, it simply felt like someone had my back. But underneath the shock value was something profound.
Art is intimacy.
The relationship between you and your voice... whether literal or metaphorical, is as intimate as the relationship between you and your lover.
Maybe more.
It is the private conversation between self and self.
To casually suggest outsourcing that voice is a suggestion to intrude upon intimacy.
Nobody gets to do that.
The aftermath
I did not get someone else to sing the album.
It went on to receive a national jazz prize nomination; part of the first diversity-focused nominations in Germany.
A deeply personal, curated recognition that still means something to me.
(Guess who sang on it?)
Nobody gets to outsource your voice
This story isn’t about one producer. It isn’t even about the music industry.
It’s about something far deeper.
Nobody gets to tell you to outsource your voice.
And nobody can build it for you.
Those are the two sides of the same truth.
There will always be people, often unconsciously, who project onto us.
Who subtly suggest that our voice doesn’t 'fit'.
That it should sound different.
Align better with a category.
A trend. A market.
Sometimes the suggestion is blatant.
Sometimes it’s polite.
Sometimes it’s polite.
Sometimes it’s disguised as opportunity.
But unless it comes from someone deeply trusted, skillful, and genuinely invested in your growth, someone capable of nuance, it doesn’t get to define us.
But here’s the second part of the equation (harder part):
Nobody can build our voice for you either.
If we don’t do the work.
If we don’t strengthen it.
If we don’t refine and deepen and practice and risk.
If we don’t strengthen it.
If we don’t refine and deepen and practice and risk.
We all have a voice. But it won’t be ours unless we claim it.
Ownership demands the identity of us being a container that not just holds, but nurtures it.
Intimacy and permission
The deeper lesson for me in that café wasn’t about criticism.
It was about permission.
Our art. Our vocation. Our 'dharma', if you want to call it that. Ikigai.
These are not pseudo-spiritual branding exercises.
They are intimate relationships.
And intimacy requires consent.
No one gets to enter that conversation without our permission.
If we allow the relationship between us and our voice to be casually hijacked, that’s a rupture in intimacy.
It took me years to fully understand what my ex-partner meant.
Now I do (I#d like to think, anyways).
When someone suggests you replace your voice entirely, they are not simply giving you 'technical advice'.
They are interfering in something sacred.
And the sacred deserves discernment.
I’m still in Bangkok as I write this.
Still juggling deadlines.
Still figuring out flights to Osaka.
Still navigating social media and questioning whether I’ll quit it one day.
But one thing I know with clarity now:
You can collaborate.
You can refine.
You can evolve.
You can refine.
You can evolve.
But you do not outsource your voice.
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